The promise of regenerative medicine is that therapies will be devised to promote the repair or replacement of damaged or diseased tissues and organs. This emerging field is approached from two distinct lines of attack. In recent years, stem cell based models have been developed to generate a suite of differentiated cells for therapeutic applications. The use of high throughput chemical genetic screening to identify modulators of stem cell fate offers great promise. The alternative approach exploits the inherent regenerative capacity of non-mammalian models to define the molecular events that permit tissue regeneration. There are several regenerative animal models including salamanders, newts, hydra and flatworms that have been established to evaluate tissue regeneration; what is currently lacking is the availability of a vertebrate regeneration model that is amenable to rapid throughput assessments. Specifically, in vivo high throughput small molecule screening has the potential to target any biological process; however, this approach has not been applied in a vertebrate regenerative system. Accordingly, there is a need in the art to develop a new system for high throughput screening of small molecules that affect regeneration.